At the risk of sounding self-absorbed, Rufus Wainwright says he half-jokingly dedicated his new album, Want One, to himself. “I was not necessarily falling in love with myself,” he explains, “but trying to learn how to love myself.”
Turns out that, for the last few years, the 30-year-old Montreal-raised son of folksingers Kate McGarrigle and Loudon Wainwright III has been a tad self-destructive.
But last year he went to rehab for drug and alcohol abuse. And the consummate New York party boy also claims to be focusing more on what’s really important to him. “After 9/11 and the war in Iraq, I felt, ‘You better get all your stuff out now before it’s closing time.’” He recorded 30 songs and plans to release Want Two next spring.
Wainwright admits that he’d also like more than just critical acclaim before it’s all over. “I want to get Want into Wal-Mart,” he says. “I’m walking on a lot of thin ice, in terms of being gay and singing about drug use and adult subject matter. So I’m trying to be tactful, considering the innately puritanical nature of the United States.”
Even with his attempts to bury themes that might make Americans nervous, Wainwright has made an intensely personal album with raw cries for help and depictions of his turbulent relationship with his father. And it’s all done in his unique piano, operatic, cabaret pop style. Call it the music of self-actualization — getting clean has rarely sounded so pretty.
